The Russian authorities publicly condemn racism as a wave of attacks on grounds of racial hatred swept through large Russian cities. Today, xenophobic attitudes are even more widespread among Muscovite intelligentsia .

However, to only condemn xenophobia once more will not convince human rights experts that the Russian government is fully determined to resolve this problem.

At the beginning of this week, the trustworthy Non-Governmental Organization "Otkrytoye Obshtshestvo" (the open society) published a report which affirms the fact that employees of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Muscovite underground stop representatives of ethnic minorities to check their documents without reason, being based only on their appearance.

Simultaneously with the publishing of the report in Russia, a special lecturer of the United Nations of racial discrimination and xenophobia Dudu Den arrived. He is to write a report on the recent murders that have taken place on grounds of racial hatred. This report is deemed to be much more impartial vis-a-vis the Russian authorities.

Despite the fact that the authorities speak about their determination in the struggle against racism, human rights experts doubt that the country leaders really watch the observance of the laws, which makes them partly responsible for crimes based on national hatred.

The basis for similar doubts arose when news spread that a conference was held last week in Moscow with the participation of the former leader of the Ku-Klux-Klan, neo-Nazis and the Holocaust denying historian-revisionist Juergen Graf.

Apparently, anybody from the foreign participants (many of them hiding from prosecution in their respective home country) had problems getting a Russian visa. Besides that, the Russian authorities have not interfered in, nor prevented, the spreading of these "actions" of racist and anti-Semitic orientation.